In fact, Shanley Kane’s Google Search Results are mostly hot takes & smear pieces about her, many of which were written by just one guy: Milo Yiannopoulous. And of the smear pieces Yiannopoulous wrote, most of them rely heavily on just one inside source: Andrew Aurenheimer aka Weev, Internet Famous Neo-Nazi hacker and Shanley Kane’s ex-boyfriend. Although these guys accused Kane of being a former racist, the charge seems hypocritical to say the least. Weev and Yiannopoulous are active, continuing racists, who, (unlike Kane) have never publicly disavowed their racist beliefs.

“Trolling is basically Internet eugenics,” he said, his voice pitching up like a jet engine on the runway. “I want everyone off the Internet. Bloggers are filth. They need to be destroyed. Blogging gives the illusion of participation to a bunch of retards. . . . We need to put these people in the oven!”

I listened for a few more minutes as Weev held forth on the Federal Reserve and about Jews. Unlike Fortuny, he made no attempt to reconcile his trolling with conventional social norms.

Weev never disavowed these beliefs. If anything, his love for white nationalism only intensified during his 2013-14 jail stint. A quick check of weev’s blog reveals he is just as proudly racist nowadays as he was in 2008.

It is a demonstration of sexism in action that Yiannopoulous’ accusations about Shanley Kane were uncritically repeated by mainstream tech news like Valleywag, without any discussion of Yiannopoulous’s own racist beliefs, or those of his source Weev. It is a demonstration of sexism in action that Yiannopoulous’s festering self-hatred and Weev’s batshit asshattery are disregarded so that Shanley Kane’s mental health can be dissected and opined about by people who never met her. It is a demonstration of sexism in action that Kane’s every move to re-establish & secure her own safety and privacy is seized upon by Yiannopoulous as an example of a paranoid feminist acting unreasonably.

It annoys me that Yiannopoulous and Weev can put on 3-piece suits, appear on the TV news, and be listened to as professionals in their respective fields; while Kane is disregarded and minimized based on the Breitbart News articles written about her. Weev in particular is feared, even; other journalists tend to recite his various hacking achievements like a litany of conquered foes. But I’m not frightened of these guys, and I don’t take them seriously. Because once you strip away the hair bleach and nazi tattoos, Yiannopoulous and Weev are basically just two bullies nursing a grudge. And the worst thing you can do to a bully is mock them.